by Terry A. Necciai, RA
At the 2019 Pennsylvania statewide preservation conference, held in 19-21 June at Wilson College (Chambersburg) a whole day-long track was reserved for presentations on farms and barns, by both the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission staff (with some others that they invited to share the first hour) and five board members of the Historic Barn and Farm Foundation of Pennsylvania (HBFF) including the author, also a VAF member.
There were presentations on how to use the state agricultural context in making National Register arguments. This included an update on what the state is now doing to revise the extensive agricultural context document (Multiple Property Documentation Form), first prepared about 5-10 years ago by a team led by Sally McMurry, a VAF member and a former HBFF board member.
There was also a presentation by an expert on barn decorations (Patrick Donmoyer, former HBFF President) such as the star patterns commonly called "hex signs," as well as a 2-person team presentation on the nomenclature for the parts of a historic barn by an architectural historian and a real-life timberframer (Jeff Marshall, another former HBFF President, and Michael Cuba, a VAF member).
One presentation was on the parts and field layout characteristics (as a kind of vernacular design) of Pennsylvania's pre-1880 farm landscapes. The landscape piece began with a concern that the "land" itself, in the sense of field surfaces and the vernacular design aspects of fence lines and field layouts, has not been very well represented in Pennsylvania National Register analysis to date. It was noted that the surfaces, shapes, terrain, and other layout characteristics are important historic resources in their own right as the evidence of the agriculture that occurred there since they are the places where plants actually grow and where animals actually graze. As a conservative estimate, the state may have historically contained as many as a million farm fields, nearly all "developed" over time through careful farming with clearing of trees and rocks and the gradual development of fertile topsoil, by an average of 10 generations of Pennsylvania farmers per farm. Certain field types and patterns relate to specific animals or crops, in what was once a large symbiotic system of plant and animal activities, with animals providing what plants needed and plants providing what animals needed. If seen as a form of vernacular design, the farm fields of Pennsylvania arguably represent the commonwealth's most abundant vernacular "typological" category as well as being one of the most important visual characteristics associated with Pennsylvania that should be preserved.
The symposium ended with a panel discussion on farms and barns, followed by a showing of a new public television film "Barns of the Susquehanna Valley."
